The last time Labor deregistered a construction union
The Labor government’s deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in 1986 was a pivotal moment in Australian trade union history. Backed by most unions, including the peak Australian Council of Trade Unions, the move against the BLF was brutal.
The union and its members were stripped of their rights federally, in the ACT and the strongest branches: NSW and Victoria. BLF members were forced to join other unions, such as the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU) or Federated Engine Drivers and Firefighters Union (FEDFA), or be sacked. The BLF could no longer represent members or win legally binding gains in the industrial relations system. A code of conduct was introduced, enforcing fines or cutting off utilities to the construction companies if they allowed BLF members to stay on their jobs.
The BLF, initially a union of downtrodden labourers, had built itself into one of the most militant Australian unions by the 1970s. Like several unions in construction, the waterfront, mining and manufacturing, it was led by the Communist Party of Australia and contributed to rising militancy in Australia, mirroring a worldwide upsurge during the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, workplace activism accompanied more political demands and action, including anti-apartheid and anti-Vietnam War movements, and support for Indigenous, women’s and gay rights. As the 1960s and 1970s militancy ebbed and bosses went on the offensive, the crucial question was which way the workers movement would go.
Most unions embraced the politics of cosying up to the bosses. In Australia, the class collaboration of the ALP-ACTU Accord propelled the Australian Labor Party to electoral victory in 1983. Union activist Ronnie remembers “a whole layer who were sold on taking that corporate unionism line. They thought it was going to give them a power base and an ‘in’ in decision making [while] providing a minimum of protection for the working class ... a trickle-down effect”. It was “an easy option to say nothing, to sign up and shut up and collect your job and fees”. That’s the kind of unionism that rank-and-file labourer Ivor Lawrence dismisses as “just revenue making, like the bloody poker machines”.
Apart from direct attacks, the Accord process continued to weaken union organisation. In the building and construction industry, union coverage fell to 47 percent by August 1988. The period between 1986 and 1988 marked the most dramatic decline, a fall of 58,000, the largest since 1929.
Militancy fell off equally as dramatically, meaning that a construction boom in 1986-88 didn’t benefit workers. “I’ve been in the game since ’49”, said lifelong BL Kyran Nicholls. “I can’t remember any boom, at any time that we didn’t get something out of it. This was the biggest boom of all and we went backwards, thanks to the BWIU, the FEDFA, ACTU and mainly the Labor Party.”
In the end, that was what even the architects of the Accord were forced to admit. The BWIU’s Tom McDonald later acknowledged that the Accord “disempowered workers and in the end undermined unionism—it took away workers’ right to struggle for higher wages and conditions with everything decided at the top echelons”.
One of the keys to that disempowerment was the BLF deregistration. From the late 1970s, when the Liberal-National Party was in government, to the Hawke ALP government from 1983, the union was constantly investigated and threatened with fines and other legal penalties for its militancy and workplace gains.
In 1986, after the latest investigation, which cited the union’s “addiction to slogans such as ‘Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win’” and its ability to act first and negotiate later, Labor used the combined forces of the state, the union bureaucracy and the employers against the BLF. When federal Labor delivered the deregistration blow, a triumphant industrial relations minister—or “minister of war”—in Victoria, Steve Crabb, was on the Sun’s front page “beating [the union] into submission”.
BLF leader Norm Gallagher dismissed the threat: “We have been deregistered before. We survived and during that time our membership increased ... We will look after ourselves, just wait and see”.
It was true that the BLF and other unions had previously overcome deregistration, or the draconian anti-union laws of the 1950s and 1960s. But this time was different. Then, other unions had rallied around the unions under attack. Now, almost everyone was acting against them.
Deregistration—D-Day 16 April 1986—and chaotic scenes spread across the industry in three states. Members were shocked on that first day. Melbourne shop steward Ivor and others felt, “How the hell can this happen? How the hell can workers do this to other workers? Disbelief”. On his job, Ivor Lawrence called a meeting, and they walked off, refusing to sign over to rival unions. Some went to the federation’s office, where other meetings and demos were being organised, determined to fight to get their jobs back.
Despite members being told the BLF had no legal status, no industrial rights and could no longer protect their wages and conditions, defiant BLs went to work determined to stay only on their federation tickets. “BLs arriving at work ... were faced with a combination of government officials armed with ‘union transfer’ documents, organisers from other unions, police on a number of sites and employers who had themselves been threatened”. As the Age had warned earlier, solidarity would have to be broken by force. The paper assumed the government “must ... be ready to use police to clear the sites and make sure construction work can continue”.
The union kept up the struggle to survive for the rest of 1986 and into 1987. Members, many of whom kept their BLF tickets, also reluctantly joined the BWIU or FEDFA to continue the fight on the job, to fight for a principle—the right to be in the union of your choice. However, after the first few months, most of the action was in Victoria because NSW and the ACT branches were too weakened to respond effectively.
The blows kept coming. On 13 October 1987, the BLF headquarters in Melbourne was raided by 150 Special Operations police in full attack gear amid government claims the union was funded by “Libyan money” and had $6 million in the bank. As the raid launched, a distraught unionist called out: “It’s World War Three! They’ve smashed the office like you wouldn’t believe, had a go at the staff, the women, cut the phones, tried to seize all the assets!”
Outraged, protesters marched on parliament and again the next day as unionists walked off the Tennis Centre job and the waterfront shut down for three hours. On 15 October, a Trades Hall delegates meeting condemned the raid. At another protest, tramways union leader Clarrie O’Shea, whose jailing had led to a general strike in 1969 in defiance of anti-union laws, backed the BLF.
The raid wasn’t aimed just at the BLF; it was designed to undermine the ultimately unsuccessful attempts by ex-BLF members inside the BWIU to build a rank-and-file challenge in the 1987 elections.
Though the BLF survived the raid, the government had dealt a nearly fatal blow. It appointed a custodian and, on $1,000 a day, former Judge Ian Sharp was given control of all the funds and investigative powers over the running of the branches. Instigating a raft of charges against officials and organisers, he mired the union in court cases and in May 1988 froze the union funds until 1991, also refusing to pay the union’s wages and bills.
Even when the BLF was forced into amalgamation with the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) in 1994, the custodian held control of the BLF funds and assets until the state finally relinquished them in 2002. Not one charge was ever laid over the original accusations.
Despite all this, amid a dramatic decline in Victorian labourers’ jobs, from 21,000 to 12,000, the remaining hope for a comeback was dashed when deregistration was extended for another five years. From 1991, the only choice left was amalgamation.
In the end, the BLF’s industrial militancy wasn’t enough. Most inside the union acknowledged the federation needed a more politically based response to the Accord and more organised opposition. After deregistration, there were attempts to build such opposition with groups such as “Defend the Unions, Defend the BLF” and a Fightback Conference pulling together activists and several unions and left-wing groups. But in the lead-up to the Accord, the BLF didn’t develop and cohere a more political opposition to counter the class-collaborationist politics of unions such as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), one of the key backers of the Accord.
The federation was seldom able to go beyond the limits of trade union struggle and, up against the power of the state, Kyran Nicholls pointed out, no union on its own could have won. Nonetheless, it was more prepared than most to take that struggle to the edge. As John Cummins said: “If we hadn’t fought, hadn’t run the distance, it [the sacrifices of rank-and-file BLs], it would have all been lost”.
Organised building workers prepared to fight not just for themselves but also for the rights of other workers and many oppressed groups—that is what brought the BLF up against the forces of capitalism and led to the campaign to smash it. This is why we remember the union to this day.
All quotes are from Liz Ross’ book Dare to Struggle! Dare to Win! The 1986 deregistration of the BLF, available from Red Flag Books.
